Saturday, November 22, 2008

It's once again time for Faith 'n Fiction Saturdays with My Friend Amy. Here is our question for today. Today's Question:We've been blessed to finally start seeing some of our favorite Christian books come to life on film. So far, these have been largely low budget films, but they generally get the heart of the books across. But my question for you is...if you had an unlimited budget, what Christian fiction book would you like to see made into a film? Who would you cast in the main roles? Would you have a preference on director? Any songs you'd like to see on the soundtrack?

I'm afraid that my answer is not going to be very popular. I am one of those book readers that cringe when I see one of my beloved books becoming a movie. Why you ask? Because Hollywood gets it wrong, ALL THE TIME! They take out the most important parts of the book, or dialogue, and I sit either in the theater or in my home saying WHAT? WHERE IS THAT? and I end up being so incredibly disappointed that it's just not worth it to me. I have yet to see The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. Tori, my son in law, has the movie, and yet I don't want what I imagined as a child reading the books or even when I re-read them to my children to be diminished. For example . . . The entire Lord Of The Rings trilogy was so far off from what J. R.R. Tolkien wrote it wasn't even funny. They didn't even start with The Hobbit, and talk about a budget, that one was out of this world! I would just rather keep what the author penned, and I imagined in my mind that have someone mess it up on screen.

I think one reason the movies become a sterile version of the book is because the movie makers want to make money. That's their primary goal when making a movie. To appeal to such a broad audience they have to be P.C., or they allow their own liberal beliefs to dilute the Christian message.

Maybe once they realize that book lovers want to see their books come to life...not some other story that sort of resembles their books--they'll get it right.

Sometimes it works to make movies out of books. one that comes to mind immediately is Big Fish. The movie was much lighter than the book, but was still fantastic despite the changes. I love that movie so much. ;)

I have the same problem with the movies nit doing justice to the book or worse being so different I wonder how that book became that movie.

I wasn't totally disappointed by LWW or Caspian but there was a scene in Caspian that wasn't from the book and didn't fit into the plot at all. I was like what the hey are they doing throwing this in there and would have had the same reaction if it were an original storyline that just threw something in like that regardless of being based on a book or not.